Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.

Friday, June 19, 2015

At least 150 Yazidi women and girls
killed themselves after they were forced to become Islamic State sex
slaves, according to a woman working with some of the survivors who
managed to escape.In one of the most comprehensive accounts of the effects of Islamic
State brutality, details emerged of the ordeals faced by hundreds of
Yazidi women, very often after their male relatives were butchered by
Islamic State members.

Irifan Mahdi, who is trying to help the women rehabilitate into some semblance of normative society spoke of the horrors in an interview with the Sputnik news organization’s Arabic website.She told the story of Jilan Barjess-Naif, 17, “a beautiful green-eyed
girl, with rare blonde hair, who slashed her own wrists in a public
bathhouse near Mosul, northern Iraq, which is under Islamic State
control.”She was separated from the less attractive girls and singled out for
special rape treatment before being put up for sale in a sex market.After she committed suicide, Islamic State members threw her body from the bathhouse into the nearest garbage dumpster.Jilan’s sister, Jihan, committed suicide a few days after being
captured and transferred, along with other girls, to A-Raqqa, the
Islamic State’s capital, in order to be sold at a slave market.Their pregnant mother, also captured, gave birth to a child in a
cave. She was freed recently and returned home “as a mad woman” after
the suicides of her daughters. As if all of this was not enough, Islamic State executed six of Jilan
and Jihan’s siblings and their father and arrested 20 other members of
the family. The whereabouts of some are still unknown.The fate of the Barjess-Naif family from Qar-Aziz in the Sinjar region of Iraq is by no means unique, according to Majid.Mahdi said she knows of 150 Yazidis who committed suicide and believes the real figure is considerably higher. “They preferred to die than to live in brutal sexual slavery and violence by organization members,” she said.

“The bodies of some who committed suicide were thrown to the dogs,”
said Yazidi nurse Amal Hasou, who works in an IDP (internally displaced
people) camp. (Read more.)

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